Staff Development Outcome
ESRC Caste out of Development: civil society activism and transnational advocacy on Dalit rights and development
RES-062-23-2227 (PI: Professor David Mosse, SOAS, University of London)
Dr LUISA STEUR
1. Written outputs
Published articles
-“Dalit civil society activism.” Seminar-The Monthly Symposium. Nr. 633. May 2012: 63-67. Available online at: See also the “Caste Out of Development blog” at
Discusses disconnection between international and grassroots Dalit activism, arguing that this is not so much a ‘local – global’ issue as a process of Dalit struggles becoming ‘dis-embedded’ from the systemic, structural processes of oppression of caste and capital.
Papers in review/forthcoming
-The Dalit trajectory of international advocacy and its distanciation from Adivasi activism. Edited volume “Caste out of development”, Routledge South Asia Series.
[Abstract: This paper starts by arguing that contrary to the legal common-sense of Dalits and Adivasis as distinct peoples, a lot of effort in fact continually goes into keeping Dalits and Adivasis conceptually apart where their everyday lives and experiences are increasingly entangled in the same social dynamics – intensified proletarianisation, circular migration, and precariousness for the majority and upward mobility, educational success and often somewhat humiliating forms of integration into “mainstream” society for a few. Having made the argument that a joint Dalit-Adivasi struggle is increasingly necessary, the paper then goes on to analyze why it has such difficulty emerging and in particular how the internationalization trajectories of both movements have contributed to the distanciation of the movements. Reasons include the fact that the blurred, everyday experiences of adivasi and dalit workers are not those most easily voiced at an international level and the fact that internationally, Dalits and Adivasis are encouraged to find a particular niche – the indigenous slot and the untouchability slot – to compete for attention in stead of articulating common concerns. Legal “victories” on behalf of international Dalit and Adivasi lobbying have often, moreover, solidified the differences. The paper ends by arguing that the distantiation mechanisms however are not so much the outcome of internationalization as of the timing of this internationalization in an era of neoliberal governance. ]
-Co-authored with David Picherit. Living with the past: Dalit civil society in the wake of Andhra Pradesh’s microfinance crisis. Economic and Political Weekly.
[Abstract: Analyses of the boom and bust (in 2010) of the microfinance bubble in Andhra Pradesh show that though the in and out-flow of finance was intense, the collapse of the finance structures itself seems to not have had a serious impact on the lives of ordinary participants: from ethnographic studies we know micro-finance has not had the unambiguously “empowering” effects it was said to have and the collapse of the system in fact helped some people to be liberated of crippling debts. Despite the sector’s attempts at dramatizing the fact that poor people lost their only access to “much-needed finance”, it was mostly the sector itself – and especially the smaller micro-finance institutions -- that suffered. But though generally true, this article shows that the boom-bust cycle of microfinance was far from harmless in its effects on poor people for important indirect reasons, namely that many civil society organizations got pulled into, and restructured according to, the microfinance bubble and hence came crashing down with these finance structures when they fell. Focusing on the Ankuram-Sangamam-Poram (ASP), the major state-wide network of Dalit organizations involved in micro-finance, and drawing on fieldwork in the district of Chittoor, once at the forefront of Dalit struggles in Andhra Pradesh and beyond, we take a closer look at what the microfinance boom and bust has meant for Dalit “civil society”. What we see emerging is a picture of local leaders for whom the past has become a psychological, social, and political burden, draining activist energies and preparing the ground for many Dalit NGOs to turn to a restricted, depoliticized agenda of service-provision while their leaders’ ambition shifts from pressurizing the state to getting a foothold in formal electoral politics. ]
-Subaltern Studies, Marxian Anthropology, and the Thervoy land struggle. New Subaltern Politics: Reconceptualizing Hegemony and Resistance in Contemporary India, ed. Alf Nilsen and Srila Roy.Oxford University Press India.
[Abstract: Chatterjee’s analysis in Democracy and Economic Transformation in India can be and has been productively enhanced in dialogue with Marxist theorizing (e.g. Shah 2008). His work in general is moreover widely read and debated in anthropology, including Marxian anthropology (see e.g. Smith 1999). Yet somehow Chatterjee has never sought the dialogue with Marxian anthropology. An unfortunate consequence is that anthropology has been brought into Subaltern Studies mainly in a rather stereotypical role, to reinforce a one-sided emphasis on culture and meaning. As I argue, Marxian anthropology would lead to the opposite by emphasizing the need to analyze culture and meaning as sites in and of class struggle, to be understood relationally in the systemic contingencies of global capitalism.
Bringing in the concrete case of the Thervoy land struggle, I connect this theoretical argument to political praxis. The struggle concerns the setting up of an industrial park to host the multinational Michelin on the common land of the predominantly Dalit village of Thervoy on the periphery of Chennai. With the theoretical sensibilities worked out in the first part of the chapter, I pay particular attention to three issues. Firstly, to recognizing the evolving mobilization in Thervoy and its politicization of the historical place of Dalits in village India. Secondly, to grasping the structural inequalities that prevent autonomous decision-making on local development from taking place. And finally, to analyzing the role of Corporate Social Responsibility in amplifying this structural inequality.]
-The Thervoy land struggle: Lessons from a Dalit democratic confrontation with “ethical industrialization”. Economic and political weekly.
[This article talks discusses the Therovy land struggle, concerning the setting up of an industrial park to host the multinational Michelin on the common land of the predominantly Dalit village of Thervoy on the periphery of Chennai. It pays particular attention firstly, to recognizing the evolving mobilization in Thervoy and its politicization of the historical place of Dalits in village India. Secondly, to grasping the structural inequalities that prevent autonomous decision-making on local development from taking place. And finally, to analyzing the role of Corporate Social Responsibility in amplifying this structural inequality.]
Edited volume
Together with David Mosse, I am working on the publication of a “Caste Out of Development” edited volume to be published in the Routledge South Asia Series, with contributions from authors including SurinderJodhka, AnandTeltumbde, Rajan Kumar, S. Anandhi, Dominic Davidappa, KSatyanarayanan, and others.
[Brief abstract of the edited volume: This volume brings together relatively short pieces that will give an overview of recent scholarship on questions pertaining to the changing but persistent nature of caste in “emerging” India, the ways in which development efforts of various kinds either elude, reproduce, or contest the inequities of caste, and how various groups are politically engaged in reshaping caste relations and/or their annihilation. As a broad overview of contemporary scholarship in this field, the volume will address questions such as: how do changing political-economic realities of “development” in India today affect Dalit activism, both in its content and organization?; what have been the effects of the “internationalization” of Dalit activism?; and how do various state-level trajectories of Dalit activism compare? The book includes both more theoretically oriented chapters as well as more empirically grounded reflections on concrete case studies.]
2. Presentations
“Transnational Dalit advocacy and international-grassroots (dis)connection.”Caste out of Development Seminar, 15-16 December 2011, Chennai.
“The question of disconnect in Dalit civil society”.National Seminar on Dalit Emancipatory Politics Today, VAK, 24-25 March 2012, Mumbai.
“International Dalit advocacy and caste-based discrimination in “emerging” India”at BASAS Conference: April 12 - 14th, 2012; School of Oriental and African Studies (London).
“Confronting the global land grab in South India: The struggle over the Thervoy SIPCOT Industrial Park in Tamil Nadu”. “Rising Asia, Anxious Europe” Conference, University of Copenhagen, 2nd & 3rd May 2012.
“Caste out of development: A field report”. Scientific Staff Seminar, Department of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen. May 7, 2012.
“On Radical Realism in Critical Subaltern Research: Lessons from the Thervoy struggle in ‘Greater Chennai’”. Seminar on Conceptualizing subaltern politics in India: Towards a new research agenda, University of Nottingham, May 21 2012.
“Reflections on the Dalit trajectory of international advocacy and its distanciation from Adivasi activism”.Seminar on The Internationalisation of Dalit and Adivasi Activism, 25-26 June 2012. Senate House, University of London.
“Caste, capitalism and the “globalizing” of the Dalit movement”.Panel on The Development Turn in Dalit activism: Disquieting Caste and Capitalism in contemporary India, EASA Conference 9-12 July 2012, University of Nanterre (Paris).
“Shaping caste and citizenship in “shining” India”: Effects of the Dalit struggle’s global turn”.Panel on The Partisan Manufacture of Citizens in India.EASAS Conference July 25-28 2012 , Lisbon.
(Co-authored with David Mosse.) “Dalit rights and the development agenda: the promise, progress and pitfalls of NGO networking and international advocacy”.Panel on Dalit communities in India and diaspora: agency and activism, research and representation.EASAS Conference July 25-28 2012 , Lisbon.
“Whatever happened to class in subaltern studies”. Presentation of paper on class and subaltern politics discussed through the example of the Thervoy struggle at the “Reconceptualizing Subaltern Politics” workshop in Bergen October 3-4 2013, organized by Alf Nilsen and Srila Roy.
3. Allied activities
-Official invitee at ILO National Conference on “Promotion of Equality at Work in India: Manual Scavenging Practices” at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, 24-25 February 2012. I was formal discussant in the panel on the “Manual scavenging and women: double oppression”.
-Co-organizer with Corinne Lennox and David Mosseof Two-day Conference on “The Internationalisation of Dalit and Adivasi Activism”, 25-26 June 2012 Senate House, University of London.
-Co-organizer with David Mosse of Panel on “The Development Turn in Dalit activism: Disquieting Caste and Capitalism in contemporary India”at the EASA Conference 9-12 July 2012, University of Nanterre (Paris).
-Co-organizer, participant and presenter at Series of Roundtable Discussions in Delhi (February 11-13 2013) and Chennai (February 14-15 2013) to disseminate the project’s research findings and discuss the research with key activists in the field.
-Participant in “EHRC project on ‘caste in Britain’: Experts’ seminar, aimed to give input for the preparation of the UK Equality Law. October 19, SOAS, London.
-Panelist discussing “Is legislation a solution to the caste system?”. Organized by the Copenhagen University International Debating Society. December 4, 2013.
-Series of three lectures delivered as part of a 3-week regional module in the mandatory Anthropology 101 course (>100 students) of the Department of Anthropology (University of Copenhagen) on “Anthropological explorations of changing caste relations and Dalit assertions in contemporary South Asia.” Fall semester 2013 (week 48-50).
4. Researcher development
The Caste Out of Development project had an immense impact on my career as a researcher by engaging me in new fields of research and new research networks. Concretely my participation in the project has helped me in the following ways:
-I attained the position of Assistant Professor at the Department of Anthropology and the Asian Dynamics Initiative at the University of Copenhagen from January 2012 onward (with a negotiated transition period from the Caste Out of Development project till September 2013).Since the Selection Committee was looking for someone with proven experience in the study of changing social relations and development questions in contemporary India, my participation in the research project proved invaluable for my successful application.
-Building on my experience gained during the Caste Out of Development project I developed a new course at the Department of Anthropology of the University of Copenhagen entitled “Flows, frictions and critical connections: South Asian transformations in global perspective”. The course focused particularly on the struggles of Dalits and Adivasis for land, the impact of human rights discourses and international organizations and the reproduction of “traditional” inequalities (nb. Caste) in the modern Indian economy – key topics of the project. I taught the course for the first time during the Spring semester of 2013 (week 14-21).
-Because of my experience with development-related questions in the Caste Out of Development project, I was chosen as chairperson of the Globalization and Development research group at the Department of Anthropology at the University of Copenhagen (for more information see
-Through my deepened understanding of the dynamics of bonded labor amongst adivasi and dalit workers gained during the Caste Out of Development research, I managed to successfully frame a small new research project “Manufacturing poverty: A study of bonded labor, kinship and livelihood dynamics in the Indian carpet belt” that was awarded research funding of 10,000 DKK by the ADI Steering Committee on 26 February 2013. During a field visit (to Mirzapur) in December 2013, a series of ethnographic interviews were conducted and a research assistant (AbhayXaxa, PhD at JNU) was contracted to continue a series of ethnographic interviews.
-Thanks to my engagement with the anthropology of development through the Caste Out of Development research project, I have been invited to join the EIDOS network, well-known for endeavoring to find novel approaches to the analysis of development processes from a sociological and anthropological perspective, at its first upcoming meeting on August 24th 2013 in Amsterdam.
5. Other relevant effects
-Establishing and continuing of feedback tiesand consultation withEuropean and International donors. I for instance am frequently involved in such feedback for CCFD (mainly through the project officer for South Asia, Sylvain Ropital), a key donor of Dalit initiatives in South India. Such cooperation has extended to e.g. the facilitation of the visit of French journalistBénédicteFiquet to meet up with research team members and become informed of Dalit struggles for land and equality within the church, involvement in TN Land Rights Federation manifesto writing process, support of & advice in the CCFD/National Campaign for Dalit Human Rights EU application, and consultation on the making of the documentary film The promised lands, on the Dalit panchami land struggles in Tamil Nadu. I have also met up various times (most recently 18 June 2013) with IDSN staff in Copenhagen (especially RikkeNohrlind, chair of IDSN) and with ILO staff in Delhi (especially CoenKoempier and Sameer Taware) to discuss ongoing work. I have moreover provided a briefing (on 12 June 2013) of Dalit organization and issues in India to Haidee-Laure Giles of War on Want.
-I also maintain contact and ongoing discussion with key Dalit activist-intellectuals in the field: team member SundaraBabu, but also AnandTeltumbde (key Dalit intellectual, responsible for the “Margin Speak” biweekly column in EPW), KaliappaManoharan (renown Tamil intellectual theorizing caste and class relations), LA Samy (chairperson of AREDS),VimalThorat (key Dalit feminist activist), Asha Kowtal (General Secretary of All India Dalit MahilaAdhikarManch), and Swati Kamble (Mumbai-based young Dalit intellectual and organizer).
-The Caste Out of Development project has allowed me to strengthenties to – and maintain ongoing academic discussion with faculty at key Indian research institutes, from the participating institutions (MIDS Chennai/S. Anandhi and Delhi University/Rajan Krishnan) to faculty at TISS, Mumbai (SuryakantWaghmore on Dalit land struggles in Maharashtra; K C Bindu on dominant notions of caste and adivasiness), Kamala Nehru College, Delhi (Carmel Christy on caste, gender, and media in Kerala), and IFLU, Hyderabad (RanjitThankappan on Dalit history in Kerala), NJU, Delhi (SurinderJodhka on Dalit activism, caste and changing political economy of India) and the University of Hyderabad (SanthiSwaroop on history of Madiga activism in Andhra Pradesh).
6. Future plans
Future fieldwork and ongoing research and publishing on the political of land and Dalit organizing in contemporary India will build on the work undertaken in the context of the Caste Out of Development project. A concrete future event still to take place is:
-Panel on “Inequality, Subalternity and Capitalist Development in Contemporary South Asia” organized together with Alf Nilsen at 23rd European Conference on South Asian Studies University of Zurich (Switzerland), 23 to 26 July 2014.
[Short abstract: The panel interrogates how typologies that have historically emerged to capture the inequality of certain subaltern populations relate to today’s lived realities - of livelihood and mobilization – and are (re)produced in the process of global, state-mediated capitalist accumulation in South Asia.]
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